Serenity/JS should make it easier to configure CA certifactes for Axios client used with the CallAnApi ability

[jan-molak]

What's the problem you're trying to solve?

The location of local CA certificates is not standardised across the various operating systems, which means that in order for a developer to use a custom certificate, they need to explicitly configure the Node.js https.Agent:

const options = {
  hostname: 'encrypted.google.com',
  port: 443,
  path: '/',
  method: 'GET',
  key: fs.readFileSync('/etc/ssl/certs/key.pem'),       // <- explicit configuration
  cert: fs.readFileSync('/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts.pem'),  // <-
};

const req = https.request(options, (res) => {
  // ...
}); 

Configuring Node.js can be quite challenging for developers, so being able to specify certificates as part of the regular Serenity/JS configuration could contribute to a better developer experience.

How would you like to solve it?

We could make CallAnApi accept a configuration object with additional rejectUnauthorized, cert, and key properties, and then configure the https.Agent based on those properties:

CallAnApi.using({
  baseURL: URL | string
  proxy: URL | string | AxiosRequestConfigProxyDefaults
  rejectUnauthorized: boolean
  cert: Path | string
  key: Path | string
})

For example:

CallAnApi.using({
  baseURL: 'https://stage.mycompany.com',
  proxy: 'https://proxy.mycompany.com',
  rejectUnauthorized: false,
  cert: '/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts.pem',
  key: '/etc/ssl/certs/key.pem',
})

Another advantage of extending the configuration to allow for cert, key, and rejectUnauthorized is that it would support implementing #594

Are there any alternatives?

Developers can specify a custom ability to CallAnApi using an https.Agent configured to accept their certificates:

CallAnApi.using({
  httpsAgent: new https.Agent({ 
    rejectUnauthorized: false,
    key: fs.readFileSync('/etc/ssl/certs/key.pem'),       
    cert: fs.readFileSync('/etc/ssl/certs/cacerts.pem'),  
  })
})

How can we make it happen?

• work on this myself (with Serenity/JS team guidance)
• hire the Serenity/JS team to build it for me
• add it to the Serenity/JS backlog and wait for a volunteer